Mary Bauermeister

Fluxus, Intermedial, Painting, Drawing, Sculpture, Art with Architecture

Mary Bauermeister was born on September 7th 1934 in Frankfurt am Main. She attended the secondary school from 1946-54, where she was influenced by her drawing teacher, Günter Ott. She then studied for one year at the Hochschule für Gestaltung in Ulm, Germany under the direction of Max Bill, changed for another year at the State School of Arts and crafts under the direction of Prof. Otto Steinert in Saarbrücken, Germany, before she began her free, artistic activities in Cologne since 1957.

With her two years lasting activities in her atelier at Lintgasse 28, she launched the dawn of new artistic dimensions from 1960 to 1961 in Cologne. This short time with crazy concerts, exhibitions, readings (you didn't know the term performance at that time) by her fellow artists sufficed to coin the image of the avant-garde, Intermedia Art city Cologne out of nowhere. It was the breeding ground for the later fluxus movement, which was given its name in Wiesbaden in 1962. Her activities had nothing to do with the later so called happenings, originated from the Viennese actionism and only came into consciousness in 1962 . In Cologne they were the prosecution of the strong performances of "New music" with John Cage, Nam June Paik, Benjamin Patterson and other like-minded artists, affected by the new music at the WDR, the art and the literature, as well as the social criticism in the post-war Germany.

In 1962, she received her first solo exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (dir. Jan W. Sandberg) with simultaneous day-long performance of electronic music under the direction of Karl-Heinz Stockhausen.

In the summer of the same year she left Cologne to make her career as an artist in New York. Shortly, her works were shown in almost all major museums.

In the 1970s she returned permanently to Germany. Since then she lives nearby Cologne in one, for this time, futuristic House with water roof and water gardens, on a huge natural property, which serves as a research station for her gardens. In addition to her artistic work, she dedicates herself mainly in designing gardens and art with architecture projects for large companies and private costumers such as the Foreign Office, Bonn; Kölnische Rückversicherungs-AG, Cologne or the country's Central Bank, Wiesbaden. In addition, her works are shown in numerous public and private collections in the country and abroad.

In 2007, the reproduction of the avant-garde music theatre of Karlheinz Stockhausen "Originals" from 1961 at the ZKM Karlsruhe took place at the end of the Fluxusausstellung "Fama Fluxus" of the Gallery of the city of Sindelfingen, decisively collaborated with the artist. Besides her works have been shown in the large-scale exhibition "Wack" in MOCA, Los Angeles. Until the end of December 2007 her works were shown in the National Museum of women in the arts, Washington, DC.